Here is one step that helped me get a used Timberline 1300 from 2018 hooked up to my home wireless network.
First, I had my phone 'Forget' my 5GHz network, so that it would only connect to my 2.4GHz network during the app-bbq connection process. Not sure why I need to do that, because from a networking point of view it doesn't seem like a requirement.
The basic process that Traeger and Inkbird and other WiFi appliances follow is this:
- connect your phone to the appliance, and here your appliance is temporarily acting like a WiFi router
- the Traeger app asks you for the 4 digit number in you Controller menu, because that completes the Traeger-1234 name for the WiFi router mode inside the Traeger controller.
- given that name, the app connects to the BBQ, just like your phone would connect to your home wireless router
- once that connection is established, your Traeger app will send your WiFi home router name and password to the BBQ (because there is no easy way to type the password into the BBQ, via the control menu, it would be too painfully slow)
- Then the app disconnects from the BBQ, the BBQ tries to now switch modes and access YOUR home wifi router using the WiFi router name and password that the BBQ got from the app in previous step
- Now the app will assume that the BBQ is hooked up to the home wifi network, and it will now try to connect to the BBQ using the regular WiFi connection to the home Wifi system.
I kept having failing to ever connect to the Traeger BBQ using the Traeger app, which is the first step in the flow, and that stopped the whole game.
So here is what I did:
- tell your BBG to 'Forget' it's current wifi connection, or if a new BBQ, it should already be broadcasting it's name as a WiFi router
- just tap in your phones wifi settings, to see all other Wifi connections in the area. Be close to your BBQ. Guess what, you will see that Traeger-1234 name (1234 is replaced by the actual 4 digits in your BBQ Controller's WiFi status menu) listed as a WiFi service! Try to hook up to the Traeger as if it was a regular WiFi acces point, and use the UUID (again in the Controllers WiFi status menu) as the password.
- that got me connected and saved the Traeger grill as a WiFi connection. Now you can disconnect from the Traeger BBQ WiFi and go back to your regular 2.4GHz wifi network service.
- NOW, you can use the Traeger app to add the BBQ to your app, and you should see that that first step is now successful, the app connects to the Traeger perfectly using Android (I didn't test iOS) list of saved WiFi services, and then you'll see that the next step is now successful, which is sending your home WiFi router name and password to the BBQ, and all should go well from there.
